Video Feature & Web-Exclusive Interview Musician:  ROBERT EARL KEEN Video:  “Merry Christmas from the Family”  ROBERT EARL KEEN’S SIXTH ANNUAL CHRISTMAS TOUR WITH NEW LOOK, COUNTRY-ROCK INFLUENCE Robert Earl Keen is presenting his most extensive holiday tour yet with the all-new REK’s Fam-O-Lee Back to the Country Jamboree. Now in its sixth year, Keen’s holiday tours have become a family tradition in his native Texas and beyond. The... 

RICHARD THOMPSON The British folk-rock hero makes an Americana connection on his latest Richard Thompson is not content to stay in one musical place. Since the 1960s, when his ace guitar skills led Fairport Convention into the rarified league of groundbreaking musicians who invented British folk rock, he’s been something of a human prism, shifting and turning his talents to spotlight musical beauty—sometimes in the unlikeliest of places, as when... 

RICHARD THOMPSON Electric [New West]  Recorded in a few days at producer Buddy Miller’s Nashville home, Electric sounds more live than Thompson’s Dream Attic(2010), an actual live album. Perhaps it’s because he didn’t overdo it in the studio. Thompson has said that he and his trio banged out the recording with minimal fuss, and the lack of embellishment does these songs good. Fortunately, austerity doesn’t come at the price of substance,... 

  FOLK FORWARD How a sound born of tradition is thriving in the modern day   By Peter Cooper It’s the other “F” word. And like its more obscene counterpart, it means different things to different people in different contexts. In the 1950s, it was sweater-vested political subversives. Later, it was shape-shifting musical revolutionaries and introspective singer-songwriters. It has been used to describe troubadours who specialize in journalistic... 

RICHARD THOMPSON An eclectic guitar slinger continues a four-decade journey through music By Bob Cannon Over the course of his long career, Richard Thompson has become accustomed to hearing fans tell him they prefer the live versions of his songs over the studio takes. So for his latest album, Dream Attic, Thompson elected to cut out the middleman—all 13 songs were recorded live during a two-week American tour last February. “We basically chop...